[WalterBright]

I understand that textbooks fall apart and need replacement. I'm just talking about the complaints that they are outdated.

The complaint I constantly hear from teachers is they work their fingers to the bone preparing lesson plans. I ask why are they making them from scratch, why not share? and don't get a response.

> Every state, district, individual school might have its own rules about what can and must be taught, and teachers often aren't given much say in that.

Then why do they say they spend all this effort creating lesson plans, not even re-using what they used last year? One teacher told me she spent her summer writing lesson plans for next year. I asked why she didn't re-use the ones she wrote for last year? She said they had to be custom made for each student. I asked how could she custom make them in the summer, when she didn't know which students she'd be getting in the fall?

That was the end of that discussion.

[coryrc]

The teachers I know do reuse their lesson plans when they teach the same class. One of the biggest values of seniority is being able to teach the same class every year.

Why they don't standardize has everything to do with the kind of people who become teachers and what they want to be doing with their time.

[WalterBright]

> The teachers I know do reuse their lesson plans when they teach the same class.

Of course they do. I knew I was being buffaloed.

Though the point stands that why don't they share lesson plans? Why do we need 3.7 million unique lesson plans? There ought to be plenty of off-the-shelf plans to use.

[mattkrause]

The reused lesson plans still often need to be updated, either in light of curriculum changes or just because something “didn’t work” (too hard, too easy, messes up a dependency, want to emphasize something else, etc).

As for why there aren’t off-the-shelf plans:

You might want to adapt the curriculum to the current class of students or the broader community. The College Board does distribute a syllabus for AP US History classes, but it’s deliberately sparse so that teachers can plug in people and events that are “locally valued” (their words, not mine). A class in Alaska might spend more time on Native events and statehood; one in Boston might up the emphasis on the Revolutionary War events that happened nearby; Texas is going to go crazy with the Alamo. This is true for other subjects too. A science class might spend more time on local ecosystems that they can visit. A few of my literature class read a play and then went to see a production of it; that part presumably had to change every year, based on what was being performed nearby.

The other reason is that the teachers need to review the lesson plan anyway: no one can remember a thousand hours of material! While doing so, it makes sense to “refactor” them into something that matches your own mental model of the content. Teaching off someone else’s materials feels weird and often goes a little more poorly.

[mkingston]

Curriculum change is relatively frequent in some places. Different classes take to different material at different paces. Different resources are available to different schools and different classrooms (think science experiments). In the UK there are online platforms for purchasing and selling lesson plans. My partner has saved much time purchasing lesson plans from these platforms. They are available.

Teachers aren't paid very well in many places and, at least here, funds aren't made specifically available for purchase of lesson plans; teachers spend their own money buying lesson plans. It's easily worth it when there's a second income in your household. Perhaps not in places where teachers are very poorly paid and for those who are on a single income.

[WalterBright]

> funds aren't made specifically available for purchase of lesson plans

You mean no teachers set up a github repository where they give away lesson plans just to be helpful? Teachers are unable to pool their resources and help each other? "Hey Mr Hand, I'm teaching science for the first time next year. Can I use your lesson plans?" "Sure, Ms Halsey!"

Besides, teachers complain a lot about spending all their time devising lesson plans. They might do cost-benefit check on whether they might be way ahead taking a second job, using part of the wages to buy plans, and spend the rest on a vacation.

[_tom_]

Simply googling would answer many of your questions in thirty seconds. For example, search for by lesson plans and you’ll discover there are many marketplaces for lesson plans.

People unfamiliar with problems frequently think they are easy, because they fail to understand the complexity of the problem.

A similar question might be “why would you invent a new programming language, when you could just use an existing one?”

Answering that question to a non programmer might require hours of explanation and background, and you might find yourself just sighing and saying “never mind”. That doesn’t mean you don’t have a reason, or it was a bad idea. It just means it’s not your job to explain things. Particularly to people who make it clear they have an agenda.

[thekyle]

> A similar question might be “why would you invent a new programming language, when you could just use an existing one?”

I feel like this is a bad analogy if you are trying to support the idea that teachers need to make their own lesson plans. Could you imagine if every programmer had to build their own programming language before using it create software? Nothing would ever get done.

Instead, the vast majority of programmers just use one of the many existing programming languages.

[WalterBright]

> People unfamiliar with problems frequently think they are easy, because they fail to understand the complexity of the problem.

Please illuminate how 3.7 million teachers need to spend their summer drawing up a new set of lesson plans every year.

> A similar question might be “why would you invent a new programming language, when you could just use an existing one?”

Great question. Because I want to. I'm not complaining about it demanding sympathy because I lose my summers working on it.

I have no problem with teachers who want to create their own lesson plans, rather than using existing ones. I'm just not buying the complaining about what a burden it is to reinvent the wheel, when they can use last year's, or a fellow teacher's, or buy one off the internet.

[mkingston]

It's probably a bit late to bother replying to this, but hey, here goes anyway.

Believe it or not, I wasn't arguing against you. My main point was to agree with you, and to inform: markets exist for lessons. The prices are quite reasonable. Some are free. I hear free lessons are typically lower quality.

I also (indirectly) pointed out that lessons are necessarily different from one another. What I've observed is that some work needs to be done even when plans are obtained from another party. Though, from what I've seen, much less. Purchasing lesson plans is a big time-saver.

Perhaps next time someone complains to you about spending too long lesson planning, you should propose they purchase some lesson plans, and see what they say. To me, that's the interesting question. Do they know these are available? Do they find the cost reasonable? Are they opposed to purchasing these lessons in principle, because they already spend their own money for the benefit of their students?

> They might do cost-benefit check on whether they might be way ahead taking a second job, using part of the wages to buy plans, and spend the rest on a vacation.

This statement is completely ludicrous to me. Humans should be given the resources they require to perform their jobs effectively. You might be strictly correct that individual teachers might be better off taking another job and buying these resources. But I think you should direct your ire at the employer of the teachers if you acknowledge that this is a problem. Consider the analogous statement:

> [Programmers] might do cost-benefit check on whether they might be way ahead taking a second job, using part of the wages to buy existing libraries, and spend the rest on a vacation.

[IncRnd]

It is amazing how many strawman arguments you are getting, apparently from teachers. You requested clarification on specific items, yet the answers discuss entirely different things. Maybe that is the actual problem with how things are taught.

[troupe]

> You mean no teachers set up a github repository where they give away lesson plans just to be helpful

Your sample set of teachers is very different than mine if they can figure out how to do something technical like that.

[coryrc]

The teachers I know do start with standard lesson plans, but for reasons I don't understand they feel the need to customize them.

[caboteria]

NIH is a powerful sentiment in many areas, not just tech.

[chris_wot]

Or perhaps every classroom is filled with unique individuals with differing learning needs?

[WalterBright]

How can they develop unique lesson plans the summer before they know which students they get?

[burkaman]

Obviously they do, here's one popular example from the national teachers union: https://sharemylesson.com/about-us

And of course teachers within any school will generally share whatever they can.

[mattkrause]

Were they IEPs?

In the US, public school students with disabilities (learning and otherwise) are legally entitled to “Individualized Educational Programs”, which is supposed to be tailored to their particular needs and abilities. For example, a student with a speech impairment might be allowed to pre-record a presentation, or do it in private, rather than live in front of the whole class. There are a lot of requirements, and putting together something that passes legal muster and really tries to support the student seems like a lot of work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individualized_Education_Progr...

[WalterBright]

No, they weren't special ed teachers.

[treeman79]

Yes. My wife had dealt with this nonsense for years. She was ready to quit her school and the major negotiation point was reusing lessons from prior year. School finally relented.